Cuba Votes as Fidel Castro Steps Down

As the January 20th
Cuban national elections came to an end, after which Fidel
Castro predictably announced his future status as a civilian
with only his self-assigned responsibilities, Washington
flat out rejected the results of the elections, claiming
that, like all of Cuba’s post-1959 ballots, were
illegitimate.

With the enactment of the Cuban Democracy
Act of 1992, the United States defiantly declared that the
Cuban communist government does not “encourage free and
fair elections to determine Cuba’s political future,”
and that, “the Cuban people have demonstrated their
yearning for freedom and their increasing opposition to the
Castro government by risking their lives in organizing
independent, democratic activities.”

With yesterday’s
news that President Castro is immediately stepping down from
his office and will not be a candidate to succeed himself,
the Bush administration has not eased up on its contentions
that the Cuban elections are rigged by the Cuban Communist
Party and that Cubans do not elect their own representatives
in an entirely open manner. Despite these claims, party
officials and many ordinary Cubans remind their critics that
the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in 1992 declares
that “all citizens, with the legal capacity to do so, have
the right to take part in the leadership of the state. This
can be either manifested directly or through their elected
representatives” in the chambers of the “People’s
Power, and to participate as prescribed by law in the
periodic elections and people’s referendums through free,
equal and secret vote.”

As the U.S. and Cuba have
exhibited dramatically conflicting beliefs about the
authenticity of the island’s democratic electoral system,
who is the American public to believe? Do Cubans actually
only cast votes on pro-communist ballots? Are the Cuban
elections legitimate? Why is the Cuban Communist Party the
only legal party on the island?

As Americans see
themselves as citizens of a free, democratic country, which
tolerates diverse and distinct political views, they must
understand the relatively exotic nature of Cuba’s
electoral system, the skewed perspective of many of its
citizens, and the fundamentally unique nature of its history
before any evaluation regarding the legitimacy of Cuban
elections can begin. We must first start by analyzing the
electoral system that Fidel Castro has left for
Cuba.

Cuba’s Electoral SystemThe Cuban electoral
system is almost inexplicable when compared to that of the
U.S.’ and other western nations. Gerardo Bencomo, a Cuban
citizen and a historian at the prestigious Cuban
government-sponsored Casa de Las Americas cultural institute
in Havana explained, “Only candidates who are nominated by
ordinary citizens are allowed to run for local office.” In
this process, electoral commissions are set up at the
municipal levels. These are formed by citizens known for
their exemplary work within the community, who also are
regarded as loyal to Cuba’s revolutionary ideals and its
present leadership. The right to vote is the only
pre-condition to attain membership on the electoral
commissions. Neither the Communist Party of Cuba nor any
other political or social organization officially sponsors
these steps in the process. Subsequently, Bencomo said,
“the electoral commission uses a simple hand-vote to
select the list of nominees for the municipal elections and
for half of the provincial legislature offices.” At this
point, 12,000 municipal council representatives and half of
the provincial legislatures are then elected by eligible
voters by means of a secret ballot. The effectiveness of the
electoral system depends on the high rate of participation
at these local meetings where candidates for the next level
are selected. The municipal elections are an essential
element of the evolving Cuban representative system, which
will indicate promise as long as true engagement and
unfettered rights of Cubans to choose their candidates are
respected.

National AssemblyAccording to the
respected worldwide, nonpartisan Inter-Parliamentary Union,
candidates for the other half of the provincial seats and
the National Assembly of People’s Power “are otherwise
proposed by . . . [municipal and provincial electoral
commissions] which [are] comprised of representatives of
workers, youth, women, students and farmers as well as
members of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
The final list of candidates, (which corresponds to the
number of seats to be filled), is drawn up by the National
Candidature Commission, after taking representing local
block groupings into account, criteria such as candidates’
merit, patriotism, ethical values and revolutionary
history.” Although the number of candidates listed on the
ballot is exactly equal to the number of seats open in the
provincial legislature and the National Assembly, the
candidates still must win 51% of the votes to get elected.
Unlike in Australia and Argentina, among many other
countries, voting in Cuba is not mandatory. However,
electoral commissions may keep tabs on those who habitually
do not vote. Non-voters are then sometimes labeled as
unpatriotic and may even be subject to a fine. So, citizens
are normally well motivated to vote. Nevertheless, Bencomo
states that “voters can enter the voting box, where they
have the choice to destroy their ballot or place an X next
to ‘refuse to vote.’” The point is that Cubans don’t
have to participate in elections even if it means annulling
their ballots, and even though voting is considered a
patriotic act in Cuba.

The Batista ReignCuba’s
electoral system is very different today than the one that
operated on the island prior to 1959. Before the Castro
revolution occurred, the existing electoral was cynically
manipulated by the Fulgencio Batista regime, as deceased
Cubans miraculously were exhumed and then voted, while
government sympathizers were allowed to cast multiple
ballots. According to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the 2003 national elections reflected a 98 percent voter
turnout. Conversely, in 1944, Ramón Grau San Martin was
elected President of Cuba with only a 45% voter turnout
rate, and in 1954, a similar situation occurred when Batista
was elected with a voter turnout rate of 46%. The high
abstention rates in Cuban elections before 1959 compares
with the 2000 presidential election in the U.S., where
George W. Bush was elected with only 37% percent of all
registered voters. Needless to state, the legitimacy of
Bush’s electoral victory is still being aggressively
debated today.

While I was studying at the Casa de Las
Americas in Havana, the president of the country’s
national assembly, Ricardo Alarcón, expressed his
perspective on Cuba’s developing democracy as he talked to
our class. He stated that he believes the democratic process
in the national assembly is improving because members in the
parliament have to be nominated and then elected by the
community. Hugo Chávez enthusiastically has labeled
Cuba’s electoral system as a “revolutionary
democracy,” while other Cuban sympathizers routinely call
it ‘grassroots democracy.’

The 2008 Cuban Election and
Opposition GroupsOn Sunday, January 20, 2008 Cubans
voted to elect members to the national parliament and to
fill the other half of the open provincial seats for
five-year terms. The new 614-member national
parliament—National Assembly of People’s Power—will
elect a 31-member Council of State (which includes the
ministry positions) as well as the nation’s president from
within the legislative body in February. Similar to the
United States, with its Electoral College, Cubans
technically indirectly elect their president.

The Cuban
Foreign Ministry reported that in October of 2008 “more
than 8.1 million voters—95% of those registered—cast
ballots to elect more than 12,000 delegates to 169 municipal
assemblies across the island.” According to BBC News,
several dissident groups, with a history of being ignored or
denounced by Cuban authorities, once again boycotted these
municipal elections. For the January 20, 2008 provincial and
national elections, Reuters reported that a resounding 96
percent of registered voters turned out to cast their vote
for provincial bodies and the National Assembly for
People’s Power elections.

The Role of the Communist
PartyCritics of Cuban elections are quick to claim that
voters are compelled to vote for communist party members
because they are afraid either to abstain or to cast their
ballots against the official candidates. Cubans, in fact,
consistently tend to elect members who have significant
ranking within the regime. According to the Latin News, the
election of Raúl Castro and other members of the regime to
the National Assembly in the January 20th elections carried
with them no surprises because “there were 614 candidates
for exactly the same number of seats in congress.”
However, despite the fact voters do not have to vote for the
candidates listed on the ballot, and that the candidates
need to obtain more than 50 percent of the votes to get
elected, to say that voters are intimidated to vote for
Communist Party members ignores the fact that many Cubans
actually eagerly vote for them because they passionately
believe that the party officials advocate for the progress
of the Cuban society as a whole. It would be simplistic to
conclude that Cubans are forced to vote for members of the
regime. These blanket statements contribute to the
prevailing, albeit relatively uninformed, U.S. analysis of
Cuba’s electoral process.

On the other hand, several
Cuban-American anti-Castro groups, as well as dissident
bodies within Cuba, together with human rights organizations
in the United States, European Union, the Organization of
American States, and non-governmental organizations (such as
Human Rights Watch) claim that Cuba’s elections lack
legitimacy because non-official factions are either ignored
or barred from participating in the electoral process.

Although dissident groups are not legally recognized by
Cuban authorities, their justification for not formally
recognizing such groups is based on the argument that some
of these small opposition parties are allies of the U.S.,
Cuba’s most lethal enemy which poses a mortal threat to
the existing regime. As the United States often has
succeeded in obtaining a high degree of penetration into
different types of dissenting groups, some specialists
believe that the Cuban government can contrive a case for
justifying the unwillingness to extend political freedoms to
certain cohorts because to do so might pose a national
security threat to the island nation. This is because
instances of the manipulation of dissent in the island by
U.S. agents is beyond dispute.

Posada CarrilesIn
October 1976, two bombs exploded on a Cubana Aviación
flight killing all of the 73 passengers on board. Freddy
Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano, who worked for Luis Posada
Carriles’ private detective agency in Venezuela, admitted
that they carried out the bombings in the name of democracy
and under the instruction of the Cuban exile terrorist.
According to the National Security Archive Electronic
Briefing Book No. 153, relating to International Terrorism:
Connection to U.S., “the CIA had concrete advance
intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile
terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner” and “another
document shows that the FBI’s attaché in Caracas had
multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the
bomb on the plane. He was provided a visa to the U.S. five
days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was
engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis
Posada Carriles.” The latter is classified by both Cuba
and Venezuela as a “terrorist,” allegedly funded by the
United States, who, in 1997, carried out a series of
terrorist bombings in the tourist district of Havana in
order to obstruct the growth of the tourist sector.

Venezuela and Cuba charged that the U.S. was funding the
terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and now U.S. government
archives substantiate their allegations. Along with these
attacks on Cuba, the Bay of Pigs, and other subversive
involvements such as multiple attempts to assassinate Fidel
Castro, these forays often have caused well-merited paranoia
in the upper stratum of the Communist nation, let alone with
ordinary Cuban citizens. Havana has been compelled by
external events to treat with suspicion all segments of
society who are not enthusiastically associated with the
Cuban revolution. While the regime has displayed a
determination to do everything possible to uphold their
revolutionary policies—espousing universal health care,
free education, eradication of illiteracy and racism—the
Cuban government also tracks domestic and foreign dissenters
abroad deemed to be mercenary groups at the service of the
United States. However, as assassination and domestically
subversive attempts have decreased, Havana is allowing a
broader representation of religious and civic organizations
to reestablish their presence in the country.

The
all-pervasive bellicose attitude by the U.S. towards the
Cuban régime unquestionably has been a factor in
discriminating against dissident figures on the island, some
of whom may actually be ordinary Cubans who are trying to
promote legitimate change on the island, in their own
person, without U.S. direction or complexity. The Christian
Liberation Movement, Ladies in White, Lawton Foundation, and
the Assembly to Promote Civil Society are dissident groups
in Cuba said to promote democratic freedoms, economic and
social change on the island. They also bear witness to the
imprisonment of political dissidents who have been unjustly
detained by the Cuban government. Up to now, the government
has not often been able to make a strong case that these
dissident figures were subversive. For example, in 1988,
Oswaldo Payá and his supporters formed the Christian
Liberation Movement, a secular group of Catholics, to strive
toward implementing “real” democratic change on the
island. In 1997, members of the Christian Liberation
Movement collected hundreds of signatures in support of
Payá’s candidacy to the National Assembly. It was the
first time that ordinary citizens without vital communist
connections had presented themselves as candidates, albeit
with limited popular support and without the government’s
backing. However, to the surprise of only a few, the
electoral commission did not accept their candidacies. In
1998, the group initiated the Varela Project—based on a
referendum that if its strategy would be approved by the
government, would allow for an open ballot on pressing
political goals. These could have been used to implement the
right to guarantee freedom of association, freedom of
expression, freedom of press, free elections, and the right
to operate private businesses, as well to see the granting
of amnesty for all political prisoners. Dissidents backing
the project presented a collection of more than 10,000
signatures of Cuban citizens to the authorities. The
unofficial national referendum was ultimately ignored by the
National Assembly during its 2004 legislative
sessions.

However, the faculty and staff at the Casa de
Las Americas, along with other Cubans with whom I spoke
while studying in Cuba for a three-month period, expressed
their concern regarding the activities of the island’s
dissident groups. Like the Cuban government, they are also
skeptical of such forces and the democracy movement in
general because of their memory of the Bay of Pigs, the 1997
terrorist bombings against Cuban hotels occupied by foreign
tourists, and past assassination attempts against Castro.
So, Cubans may feel compelled to support pro-government
candidates because the Cuban leadership is adamant about not
yielding to would be or putative foes that are feared
throughout the island.Many Cubans believe that the
dissenters intend to undermine revolutionary principles,
such as national independence, when opposition groups could
be able to infiltrate the country’s vital institutions.
Most Cubans trust the Cuban Communist Party to guide the
nation toward economic prosperity and ideological purity
since the party, loyally backed by much of the citizenry,
already has been moderately successful in the eradication of
severe social distortions which were to be found in
pre-revolutionary Cuba. Now the government finds itself in a
struggle to economically prosper while facing an embargo
being maintained against it by the world’s richest
nation.

ConclusionFlaws are fully apparent in the
Cuba’s electoral process, but then again, as we have
recently seen, the same is true with the U.S.’ equally
troubled electoral process. While Cubans directly choose the
candidates for municipal elections by means of a pyramidical
system, U.S. voters merely decide from the limited number of
choices they are given to make their selection. Similar to
the U.S. voters, Cubans indirectly elect their president.
Cuban officials emphasize the point that candidates have
earned the respect from their constituents rather than from
being able to outspend their opponents as often occurs in
the United States.

If legitimacy and implementation of
free elections is an issue of great concern for the United
States, Washington should also strive toward pressuring some
of its authoritarian allies such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates to also
implement free elections. Before the U.S. starts critiquing
the Cuban electoral system, Washington should end its
contradictory policy of expressing selective indignation
toward the shortcomings of leftist regimes while displacing
preferential treatment toward right-wing governments.

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